Dancing With Redemption (Barre To Bar Book 5)

by Summer Cooper

  Let her enjoy this moment of innocent fun, he’d deal with the darker parts of reality for her. Hopefully, he’d have her mother back soon and this would all fade into a strange memory that she couldn’t quite remember. He hoped that’s how it would turn out anyway.

  “Matteo’s people found six more properties that should be searched, Lincoln,” Monica said as soon as he stepped into the room, and he nodded in understanding.

  They were using a study filled with books, tables and chairs for reading, and a large desk as a control center. It hadn’t changed since the day Lincoln moved in with his mother all those years ago, instantly gaining a brother. Now he had a half-sister to go with the stepbrother, and both were doing as much as they could.

  Liam was helping search the buildings. June was in surgery at the moment, but she’d be back at the house as soon as the patient was settled into a recovery room, helping to trawl through information. Lincoln didn’t mind that June was still at work, she was needed there, and her job was important.

  He knew both his siblings wanted to help and that was what mattered. Even Dr. Bennet and his soon-to-be new wife were helping by tracking the search teams on a dry-erase board. They were staying in touch with all the teams, marking off properties as they were cleared. They even had Matteo’s and Kai’s teams up, so there wouldn’t be any time wasted with another team searching a building that was cleared already.

  It was all very efficient, even if the cops weren’t involved. Lincoln had his doubts about the local police and had decided early on that it was pointless to even bring them in when it would only bring questions up. Questions like who Roxie really was, why she was using a fake identity, and what that might mean down the road for her. There were a few mud puddles that would have to be cleared up later, but for now, his focus was on finding Roxie. He had a feeling their sole interest would be in trying to figure out if she’d committed a crime worth pursuing her for before they ever started to look for her.

  Nope, best to just leave them out of the loop, right now. And if things went south when they did find Roxie, if someone had to die to get her back, then it was best if the police weren’t anywhere around when that happened. Matteo had already assured Lincoln that he and his team would do whatever it took to bring Roxie back safe and sound. Whatever it took, the man had said, with an intensity in his eyes that left little doubt that he meant it.

  “Right, what else do we need to do, ladies?” He rubbed his hands together, looking at the dry-erase board on their side of the room.

  “I’m sending the new addresses over to Dr. Bennet to coordinate the searches with the teams,” Tanya said, typing each address into a message box on the screen of her laptop. “Then I’m going to go through some other files Matteo sent over. There are some properties his uncle owned but the names were never transferred over. He’s not sure if he owns them now or if they’re in some kind of limbo.”

  “Those might be exactly what we’re looking for.” Lincoln moved to stand beside Tanya. “He won’t tell me who this person is that he thinks has her, but I have an idea on it. Let’s have a look at those addresses. I have a feeling that’s where we’ll find her.”

  “Sure, these are the buildings.” Tanya frowned as she scrolled through a document file on her screen, and Lincoln leaned to look over her shoulder. “This one is an apartment building. One of my cousins lives near there. I doubt Matteo even knows it exists. My cousin says she won’t go near the place because a slumlord owns it. A lot of drugs and prostitution in the vicinity and inside the building.”

  “Oh?” Lincoln noted the address and typed it into his phone to send to Dr. Bennet as he walked over to the man. “Have we got a team free? I want them to check out this place.”

  “Hm. An apartment building. We might need to involve the cops with this one. We can’t search occupied apartments.” Dr. Bennet looked over his black-rimmed glasses to give Lincoln a look that said he didn’t like not involving the cops, but he’d do whatever Lincoln asked of him. Because that’s what a good dad did. Lincoln sighed heavily, but nodded, the older man would do whatever he asked, but he wouldn’t force him to on this one. “No, we don’t want to go into validly-occupied apartments. It’s the ones that are empty or the ones that are supposed to be empty that we’ll search. Without the police, for now.”

  “As you wish, Lincoln. I know you’re suspicious of the local cops but maybe we should contact the police in NYC soon? We’re going to run out of legal ways to search if we keep going.” Dr. Bennet sighed this time, and Lincoln flattened his lips before he gave another nod.

  “I understand, but for now we have Matteo’s agreement that we can search the empty buildings and apartments. The man owns a huge chunk of New York City and that’s the good news. That means we don’t need to involve anybody just yet. Later, if we don’t find Roxie, we may need to get the police involved to search a building or two, but for now, we’re still within the law. It’s fine, really.” Lincoln smiled with reassurance, and that seemed to appease the man he respected as the only real father figure he’d ever known.

  “That’s fine then, son. Let me get a team on this new place.” Dr. Bennet turned away to look at the board, picked the one that was closest, and sent the new address to the team leader.

  The teams were taking their time, doing a thorough search of each building and the rooms inside. The searches were being done as quickly as possible, though, even if it felt like they were going on forever to Lincoln. The sun had gone down, and his stomach grumbled, but he couldn’t think about food right now. Not with Roxie out there somewhere, needing rescue.

  He wasn’t sure who she needed rescue from or why exactly she’d been taken. Murder was the obvious answer, but he didn’t want to think about that. Unfortunately, it was the logical answer he couldn’t stomach. Whoever had her wanted her because of the business with Roxie’s dad. That was the undeniable link in all of this.

  Matteo had tried to call those two men who’d been at Roxie’s childhood home that night, but neither had answered the calls. He’d been determined to get them in, to question them and demand answers, but they’d dropped off the face of the Earth. None of Matteo’s people knew where the men were either, which meant they’d deliberately dropped out. Not answering the head of the family was a no-no with Matteo’s bunch, so it was huge that both men had disappeared.

  It meant their allegiance was with someone else and Lincoln suspected they’d pay for abandoning the family long before Matteo could handle that situation. Someone lower down, someone closer to the men, would take care of the betrayal first. If Lincoln didn’t get to either one of them before anyone else could. He wanted to break their kneecaps, wanted to crush their spines, and make them pay for what they’d done over the years to Roxie and her family. To his daughter’s family.

  And if he ever got his hands on any of the people involved, he’d do just that.

  11

  Roxie

  “Please stop,” Roxie gasped, her eyes too blurry to see out of, pain a constant piercing ache throughout her body. Blood, sweat, and tears stung at her eyes when she leaned her head to one side or the other, though she wasn’t exactly sure which wound the blood was coming from. There were…so many.

  In the last couple of hours, the woman had gone silent, but that silence was terrifying. She didn’t say a word when she took out what must have been the oldest hair clippers known to man. There wasn’t even a cord, so maybe they were meant to be used on animals? Roxie had been terrified when the woman brought the clippers over and held them close to Roxie’s lips. The woman had spoken two words then, two words that nearly made Roxie faint.

  “Don’t move.”

  She’d then begun to clip away Roxie’s hair with the hand-operated clippers, one chunk at a time. Roxie had cried, from fear and from pain. The clippers pulled out more hair than they cut, and the blades had dug into her scalp more than once. There’d been no questions, no demands from the woman, just silent glee that made her appear insa
ne whenever she’d move to look Roxie in the eye.

  Roxie had expected some kind of questions, demands for answers, but this was even worse. It was torture for the sake of torture. There were no answers needed, just twisted victory with each clip of those awful metal blades. A thousand possibilities flitted through Roxie’s mind, with the main trauma-inducing image being the one where she didn’t stop at Roxie’s hair. Hair could be regrown, she’d buy a fucking wig if she had to, but what if those blades moved lower?

  Roxie wanted to break the cuffs, to find some way out of this, but there was no escape so she tried to stay as still as she could, even when relief flooded through her. That relief didn’t last long, though. Major Crazy Bitch just moved on to new and even more delightful torture techniques that did make Roxie pass out once she was done with Roxie’s hair.

  Roxie didn’t move her hands now, not to appease the woman, but because Major Crazy Bitch had pulled all of her fingernails out. Roxie had managed to stay in the real world as the first five were pulled out. It was the other hand that caused her to lose all consciousness. She’d woken up when the woman tried to pull out her toenails, but stopped there for some reason. Roxie tried to breathe through the pain, tried to catch a moment of relief, but the moment didn’t last.

  She had screamed her throat raw when the first needle was shoved silently under the toenail on her right foot. She wasn’t sure, but she thought there were two needles in each of her toes. There’d been no seconds of oblivion with that session, Roxie had endured every moment of it. The woman cackled with joy every time Roxie screamed, as if it were music to her ears. Roxie tried to hold the screams back, wanted to deny the mad woman any kind of pleasure, but she couldn’t help it.

  Her heart pounded painfully from the pain of the torture, and her pulse raced along in time with her heart. The pounding in her skull was not nearly as painful as the other wounds she now bore, but it didn’t help. Roxie writhed from the complete agony she was in, until she accidentally brushed a finger against her head. She went still then, wanting nothing more than a few IVs of morphine and oblivion. She wanted to escape this pain.

  But she didn’t wish for death. She hadn’t wanted to contemplate that being a possibility earlier, but now? Now, she was fairly certain death would be the only out she’d get from this insane woman’s torture. Roxie didn’t want it to be true, but she had to face facts. This woman was not going to let her go.

  It was only when the woman came back into the room that Roxie realized she’d been gone. “I bet all of those little injuries are really starting to throb now, aren’t they?”

  Roxie didn’t respond, she was too afraid to say anything. What if speaking made the woman cut her tongue out? Roxie tried not to roll her eyes in fear, but she allowed the lids to close.

  “No, open your eyes, my little beauty. I want you to see what’s coming next,” the woman said as she grabbed Roxie’s chin, making her open her eyes.

  Roxie saw a rubber mallet, not a big one, but big enough to cause pain. It seemed the woman’s silent period was over as she became a regular chatterbox, spewing a stream of bullshit that Roxie couldn’t exactly interpret. “Your father set up Ruby, you know? Yes, the little slut who stole my husband was your dad’s cousin and he helped to get her on her feet when she came up here looking to be a star. He introduced her to my husband, MY husband.”

  The woman struck Roxie with the mallet as she screamed that last part, hitting her so hard in the hip Roxie was certain the bone had shattered. Roxie jerked on the table, pulling at each of her painful digits, causing pain to explode throughout her body. Roxie screamed again and again, letting the pain wash over her rather than asking the woman to stop again. That had proven pointless anyway.

  She’d spent a lot of time in her life treading the line between pleasure and pain, but that had all been voluntary. It had gotten her through the first few nails being pulled out with pliers, but this was prolonged, sustained, unasked for torture. There was no pleasure, there was no satisfaction for her, of any kind. Only the certainty that the woman would not stop until she killed her.

  “Now, I could have forgiven your father that part, but he hid her from me after my husband was killed. He took her back down to Louisiana and he hid that swamp trash from me.” The woman shrieked every word, and the mallet came down again, aimed right at the lowest part of Roxie’s abdomen. It went slightly to the left, almost hitting Roxie’s other hip, but it landed all the same.

  Roxie began to feel something hot and wet between her legs, but she didn’t know if it was blood or urine. It could be either at this point.

  “Oh, look. I think you might be losing that monster you’re germinating inside of you.” The woman dipped her hand between Roxie’s legs and pulled her fingers up, covered in blood.

  Roxie’s blood went cold, but her brain was already taking her away from all of it. She was already a step or two out of the world, barely in it, but unable to let go completely. The pain kept her awake. But her brain was pulling her away.

  Don’t think about it, Rox. Just focus on breathing, girl. Nothing else, just breathing.

  “Oh no, my girl. You aren’t going to wander off into some kind of trance on me and escape this little scene. Not going to happen.” The woman moved away from the table and came back with a bucket.

  “No,” but that was all Roxie had time to shout as a bucket of water poured over her head and torso. The woman had left all of Roxie’s clothes on, thankfully, but now the clothes held the water against Roxie, freezing her skin in the low temperature.

  “Good, I see you’re wide awake again. Now, where was I?” The woman picked up the mallet again and looked up at the ceiling. “Oh yes, Ruby and her brat. Because, of course, the stupid slut was pregnant with a baby that should have been mine!”

  The woman pouted, her eyes mean and hard, making the pout something nasty.

  “I was going to just let it go after that, focus on making a life for myself without my husband. But the woman’s brat turned out to be beautiful, and well, I decided I wasn’t done with my revenge. You managed to get away from me the night your parents died, and it just seemed like fate wanted me to get rid of that bastard child. So I sent Matteo down there to do the job. He was supposed to destroy the slut and her daughter, but instead, the daughter proved to be just like her mother. I’d raised Matteo from a young boy, you see? He was my son. And Ruby’s slut of a daughter took him from me. Ruby steals, her daughter steals. Ruby stole my husband, Ruby’s daughter stole my boy. I couldn’t let that go. But even she keeps escaping me. So I had to focus on you again. And luckily, you made yourself a present to me, didn’t you?” The pleased smile was just as blood-chilling as the pout had been, a grimace that Roxie couldn’t look away from.

  “I have no idea who or what you’re talking about,” Roxie said when an answer seemed to be needed. “I don’t know any of those people.”

  “No, of course you don’t. Your father tried to hide his mother’s past. His father made all of his money in oil and left it to him. When my husband was killed your father tried to hide every connection he had to that family, to Ruby, but I knew about them already. Yes, I just tripped right on down memory lane before he managed to erase it all. That’s how I found him, found your family. I sent my guys around to teach him some manners when he refused to meet with me, but they botched that, thinking I’d sent them around for money. Then they burned the house down without making sure all of you were in it. So stupid.” The woman’s words trailed off, but Roxie wasn’t really sure any of it made sense anyway.

  She sounded crazy, unstable, and obsessed with one too many people. Or happenings. Something. None of it made sense and it was hard to form linear thoughts at the moment, so she stopped trying.

  “At least the old slut had the good grace to die,” the woman snickered, her eyes shifting from side to side. “Although, I might have helped her along a little. Don’t tell anybody that, though. But I guess you won’t, will you? If I can’t kill my n
ephew’s wife, you’ll have to do. Clarence, bring in Charlie, won’t you?”

  Who the hell was Charlie? Not that Roxie really cared, but if she was about to meet someone else it would have been nice to be prepared. Roxie didn’t have to wait long though. As it turned out, Charlie wasn’t a who, but a what.

  Clarence came in, some kind of contraption in his hands that would surely be ridiculously dangerous in this apartment. Roxie wasn’t sure what it was, but it had what looked like a faucet on top and a tank of some kind attached to the bottom of the faucet. There was a vague memory in the back of her mind, a blue flame, but Roxie wasn’t sure when the memory was formed or where. It might have even been a movie that she’d seen. Then the woman moved closer and Roxie saw that it was some kind of gas tank that was attached to the brass fitting. Fuck…

  “Ah, I see Charlie has your attention. He’s my handy-dandy blowtorch. I’ve only been able to use him a few times since I got him. And he’ll take care of any evidence that might be left behind. Have you ever seen a blowtorch in action, my dear? No? Well, you’re about to. Clarence, you and Bobby can go. I’ll meet you downstairs in the car.” The woman waved the men out of the room and aimed a nozzle at Roxie.

  A sound popped in the distance, followed by a dozen or so more.

  “What was that?” The woman frowned and went to the door. “Clarence? Bobby? What’s going on out there?”

  Roxie went still, straining to hear, but no more pops broke the silence. But neither did voices. There was only silence, until a louder pop and a gasp made Roxie turn her head. The woman was on the ground, the blowtorch still clutched in her hand. There was a large hole in the back of her head that Roxie stared at blankly.

  I guess that’s what happens when a bullet goes through someone’s brain then, she thought with detached curiosity.